Just to make clear, I am not advocating the death of Fred Wilpon or anything; I just think there are a lot of people in New York who would perhaps look the other way if he were, say, falling off a subway platform. Especially after his ill-advised, super scandalous, poor-me spread in the New Yorker. Fred Wilpon doesn’t give many interviews and he certainly doesn’t offer tantalizing quotes on a regular basis – and that is what makes this piece so intriguing.Whatever possessed him to provide Jeffrey Toobin, an all-around excellent journalist, with that much access and brutal honesty is beyond me. He undoubtedly wanted to soften his family image in the harsh glare of public scrutiny; he is, after all, being sued for one billion dollars due to his entanglement in the Bernie Madoff scandal. And Fred’s rags-to-riches story is, of course, admirable. But what was he thinking calling himself a schmuck for signing Carlos Beltran? Or referring to David Wright as a good player, but not a superstar? Or slamming Jose Reyes, who is pretty much adored by fans, and declaring that he will never get the money he is looking for next year?Even if laced with truth, even if he said what everyone else has thought, what the hell was he thinking saying this shit as the owner of the Mets?And who would ever want to play for him?
Obviously, this overshadowed the purpose of the piece; no one cares that you used to be poor when you are willing to slam your employees and franchise. This is particularly true when you have fraudulent felon of the century, Bernie Madoff, as your voice of support and reason. Bernie told the New Yorker that Fred was “not sophisticated enough to evaluate properly” or “perform the necessary due diligence” to detect the massive Ponzi scheme.And that is somehow supposed to mitigate the disastrous state that the Mets are in or Fred’s total incompetence? Please. If Fred Wilpon was trying to endear himself to fans or the media, he failed. Miserably. The Mets have dealt with embarrassment after embarrassment over the past few years – but Fred’s amazin’ arrogance and victim syndrome just might be the icing on the cake. I mean, take some fucking responsibility for the mess you created. I never thought that I would say this, but I feel badly for New York’s junior varsity baseball team.They deserve better than this, and maybe Bud Selig will finally take notice that his buddy Fred is a huge dick.
